The Innocent's Surrender

In the meantime, in spite of her efforts to pull free, she was being taken up those curving stairs to a galleried landing.

‘What is this?’ she demanded huskily. ‘Where am I? Tell me at once.’

Silent, impassive, they halted in front of a pair of double doors, and knocked. The man from the airport reached down to the ornate handles and the doors opened noiselessly.

They didn’t push her in. It wasn’t quite as crude as that, but somehow she was stepping forward, and they were moving backwards, and the doors were closing again behind her. Leaving her standing there, alone.

Except that she was not alone.

It was a very big room, but all Natasha noticed was the bed, lit on either side by tall lamps, like a stage set. Illumining, she realised dazedly, the man who was sitting in that bed, leaning back against a mound of snowy pillows, and naked down to the sheet discreetly draped across his hips, and probably beyond, as he worked in the laptop computer open in front of him.

He unhurriedly completed whatever task he was engaged on, then Alex Mandrakis closed the lid, put the laptop on the adjacent table and looked at her.

‘Ah,’ he said softly. ‘The beauty I was promised, here at last.’

His voice was cool. His English spoken with only a faint accent.

He can make love in four languages…

Her throat closed as, for the second time in her life, his dark gaze swept her from the silk of her blonde hair down to the neat black pumps on her feet. But this time, the expression of frank appreciation in his eyes was mixed with something altogether more disturbing.

Involuntarily, Natasha took a step backwards, and saw him smile.

She said hoarsely, ‘What’s happening? Why am I here?’

‘You offered yourself to me,’ he said. ‘In writing.’ He shrugged a bare, muscular shoulder. ‘I am therefore accepting your offer. It is perfectly simple.’

‘No.’ This time Natasha stood her ground, and glared at him. ‘It’s total nonsense, and you know it as well as I do. So don’t pretend you were fooled even for a moment by my agreement to marry you.’

She turned and walked to the door, with an assumption of calm she was far from feeling. ‘However, the joke’s worn thin for me now, so I’m out of here.’

She grasped the door handles, twisted them one way then the other, but the heavy panels they controlled did not move an inch.

‘You are wasting your time.’ His voice was tinged with amusement. ‘The door is locked and will remain so until morning.’

She swung round. ‘But you can’t do this,’ she said thickly. ‘You can’t shut me in—stop me leaving. I—I don’t know what game you think you’re playing here, Kyrios Mandrakis, but please believe I have no intention of becoming your wife. Now or ever.’

‘Then we are at least in agreement about that,’ he drawled. ‘Because there is indeed no question of marriage between us, Natasha mou. And you are the one playing games, not I.’

He paused. ‘You must understand that I am referring to your second letter, which was couched in very different terms from the first, and which promised me a range of intimate delights that few unmarried girls would dare admit they knew, let alone suggest to any potential husband.’ He added mockingly, ‘And least of all to a man they had never met.’

Her lips parted in shock. ‘Second letter?’ she repeated helplessly. ‘There was no second letter. I only signed the first under duress. You must be raving mad.’

‘And you are a hypocrite, which I find a disappointment,’ he told her coolly. ‘I had expected that a girl who spoke with such mesmerising frankness of her sexual desires and fantasies would at least have the courage of her convictions, when finally confronted with the focus of her…longings.’

‘You’re the focus of nothing, Kyrios Mandrakis, except my dislike and disgust,’ Natasha said curtly. ‘I thought my brothers had cornered the market in arrogance and conceit, but you beat them—hands down.’

‘And I shall continue to do so, Kyria Kirby,’ Alex Mandrakis retorted, ‘in every way that occurs to me, therefore your ludicrous assessment of my character does not concern me.

‘You may well regret your candour in writing to me, agapi mou,’ he added, the firm mouth twisting. ‘But I do not. And, while I may never have believed in you as a future wife, I look forward with eagerness to enjoying your versatility as my mistress.

‘Which is why you are here with me tonight, as you must know by now. To begin your new career in my bed.’

The breath seemed to choke in her lungs. She stared at him incredulously, her startled eyes taking fresh stock of his state of undress and its devastating implications.

The formal evening dress he’d worn at their first encounter had concealed broad shoulders, and a sculpted chest shadowed by body hair tapering down towards his flat stomach and lean hips. His tanned skin was almost shockingly dark against the white bedlinen.

She didn’t want to imagine how the rest of him might appear.

Her voice seemed to come from a great distance.

‘I’d rather die!’

His brows lifted cynically. ‘When it was your own idea?’ he challenged. ‘I hardly think so.’

‘But I keep trying to tell you,’ she protested, hating the edge of growing desperation she could hear in her own voice. ‘There was never any second letter. Oh, why won’t you believe me?’

‘Because I have the evidence which makes a liar of you.’ His tone was almost casual. ‘In which, of course, you are no different from the rest of the Papadimos clan. Liars and cheats all of you, and, like most of your persuasion, only sorry when you are found out.

‘But your foster brothers will have even more to regret,’ he went on. ‘They will have to endure the shame of knowing you belong to me as my eromeni—my pillow friend—and that when I tire of you they will have you returned to them—used, and discarded.’ He paused. ‘Maybe…even pregnant.

‘A final blow to their family honour from which they can never recover,’ he added harshly as Natasha caught her breath.

‘You can’t do such a thing.’ Her voice was ragged. ‘No one could. It’s barbaric—vile. And do you imagine that I’ll let you get away with it? That I won’t have you arrested for kidnap and—and rape, no matter how powerful you may think you are?’

‘Kidnap?’ Alex Mandrakis repeated musingly, and shook his head. ‘When you responded willingly to my invitation, and allowed my driver to bring you here? He reported no scene at the airport. No screams or struggles.

‘As for rape, I doubt whether such an accusation could possibly succeed. Not when your letter is made public, as it would have to be. No court would convict me for taking advantage of the services you volunteered of your own free will.’

She flung back her head. ‘I say you’re the one who’s lying, Kyrios Mandrakis. I don’t believe this letter even exists.’

He sighed, then leaned across to open a drawer in the bedside table.

The sheet slipped a fraction, and Natasha hastily looked away.

When Alex Mandrakis straightened, she saw with a sinking heart that he was holding a file. He extracted two sheets of paper.

‘The first,’ he said, holding it up. ‘Your agreement to become my wife as part of this mythical deal between our families. You accept that exists?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I admit that.’

He paused, his mouth curling sardonically. ‘And this is the second letter, which outlines your alternative proposals for our future union. The signatures on both documents are identical, as you see.’

Yes, Natasha thought numbly as she looked at them. She did see.

She said in a voice she hardly recognised, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Shall I refresh your memory—of the third paragraph, perhaps, which seems particularly inventive?’